Talk:Soraka/@comment-5024192-20140927112808/@comment-5955640-20140929072512
Were we playing the same game? Old Soraka was only good in Season two when the sustain comp was in full effect and champs like Blitzcrank were ushering in the age of kill lane craze. The main problem with laning with Soraka was that in a sustain lane it was useless because Blitz, or Leona, and Later on Thresh would just grab you and your heal wouldn't save anyone's life. Only crowd control could peel them off and you could only silence one person and that's not a deterrent for an auto attacker. She got buffed and modified in season four but that only made solo lane Soraka unbearable. Talk about a battle of attritution! She would just widdle you down and silence you, whittle you down and silence you. Jungler came to gank? Heal and walk away. If she came back with a chalice or farmed up any of the mana items that was it. Prepare for late game where she heals entire teams for more than half their health and rips away magic resistance while being impossible to kill as she spams Q on everyone around her. Soraka wasn't replaced now by other supports who now heal better than her. She was replaced by support nominated champs that made results in lane. All the way back by the end of Season two she was useless and unfit for meta. This new Soraka isn't doing something that other supports are doing. Most of them. Actually. All of the main support champs don't have Silence as a AOE. Nor do they have a possible snare AOE as well. Fiddlesticks can Silence with the crows but he's not directly support for his allies in any way. He just has a loaded kit with tons of CC that can be put to support use. Same thing for Lux who can technically snare two people. Her kit is mostly offensive with a shield for general damage soaking. Neither of those champs have what new Soraka has which is a very powerful constant heal. You lose health for it but you should see what happens when you Q more than one opponent. You'll get most of that health back and if you are having trouble hitting with it well it sure is lucky that one of the spells can snare an opponent huh? This is a built in drawback to prevent you having an unstoppable sustain lane while being the best healer in the game. That's right. While most supports with heal have a funny little addtional power with their heals, nobody can actually heal enough to completely keep someone alive (or rush to their aid to save them) like Soraka can and with the buff to Wish she can counter enemies with natural Grevious Wound applications which mind you is a very trade winning debuff (you can save allies who have been ignited!) You are still a good target to focus on. Which is no change to how she's always been until mid or late game where she tanks or if she got fed early goes full AP and denies most if not a a substantial amount of kills. The AOE snare and Silence in a teamfight is pretty great. If they don't focus you, you could spend the teamfight healing and star calling the entire group and keeping yourself sustained as you heal your allies at a breakneck pace. It really only becomes a problem when they realize that they have to get at you but you should always be behind your ADC or Tank like previous Soraka would be. Will she be popular? Of course not! She still doesn't create a kill lane. It's still a sustain lane and she's still countered by brisk bursty plays. But now playing her won't be a matter of topping someone off like a Waiter at a resturant.